A/N: I saw Superman Returns two weeks ago, and I couldn't help thinking 'hey, the new Superman looks very much like I imagine adult Nathaniel, only I imagine Nat with long hair!' Black hair, dreamy blue eyes… yeah, the guy reminded me of my imaginary adult Nat. So very hot:))

The movie also inspired me to a Superman one-shot fanfic titled More Than Life Itself. If you're interested, check it out here on ffnet, but be sure to have a tissue at hand.

Review responses sent out as usual.

Also thanks to: Saldaen farmgirl, LandUnderWave, ebtwisty9, Fredryck, pi-fan92, Hugani, Mewhoelse, Soccer101, the Thirteenth Councilor, TheWatcherandReader, silver-moonlight-on-the-sea, AmethstyPhoenix1, gremlin, EliasDaemonwing, BobtheFrog, Queen Dragon, baby-blue-angel91, Musica Diabolos, Mistri, Tonks' Admirer, fikle, Glitara Keladry Sophia, Pyshcodelic-Pixie, Apo

Chapter 14

In Which Nat Shows Signs of Schizophrenia

(Not That I'm Worried About Him Or Anything…)

Weeks passed and I was still condemned to live in Nat's house and spy on the little family Mandrake. To my relief at least I didn't have to witness as many naughty things as I had before, simply because the lovebirds were doing it less and less frequently. There was a certain tension between them, and sometimes I thought the very air was vibrating with it. Nathaniel and Kitty, however, pretended not to have noticed it, and went on with their business as though nothing had happened.

Nathaniel was working overtime at Parliament and I heard him telling Kitty more and more often about American spies he and that chap Ffoukes had managed to catch and about British victories in the Americas. Once he even mentioned that the Deputy Prime Minister, some old crock called Weatherby had suffered a second heart attack. He looked happy about it.

Besides his normal work as a Minister, he began organising things for Kitty's departure. He rented a house in some village called Fenny Bridges in Devon, bought a Ford Fiesta and a stack of 'plain' clothes for himself. I suspect that if a magician spotted him in clothes like that, Nat would claim to have thought it was Halloween already and he was dressed up as a commoner for fun. Not that I could imagine him doing anything for fun… besides sex, of course.

Kitty, meanwhile had made purchases for the later months of her pregnancy: maternity dresses in all colours of the rainbow, a winter cloak big enough for a pregnant woman, and even a few baby clothes. However, she refused to dye her hair, which started a little argument between her and Nat. She snapped at him that he was abnormally paranoid, and he snapped back that he was rich and famous enough to be paranoid. Well, they both had a point.

Nathaniel even summoned a female foliot and placed her at Kitty's disposal. Kitty refused, telling him that she didn't need a servant, but the kid insisted that she would need someone to look after her in the village on weekdays. The foliot named Enid was forbidden to talk to anyone about Kitty's pregnancy (actually, Nat had put a rather nasty curse on the unfortunate demon: if she ever told anyone about his wife's condition, she'd be reduced to ashes on the spot). Although sometimes I wondered whether Nat had a spark of decency in him, things like this persuaded me that he did not. But such things at least came in handy to stifle my pangs of remorse at having betrayed him to the Tramp. (Yes, I was still having those once in a while… I'm a noble creature, after all, never forget that!)

The Tramp had got lazy and into the habit of summoning me only once a week to hear my report. Apparently the baby's arrival had been just enough for her to start plotting something really evil against the Mandrakes and she was no longer that eager to hear new pieces of information. Not that there was anything I could have told her, besides the name of the village Nat had rented a house in.

Thankfully my mistress had so far never thought of asking me whether I knew John's birth name, but it was still bad enough that she had instructed me to find out and tell her the baby's.

Sometimes I wished I could somehow warn the kid and Kitty about the danger looming ahead, but the Tramp had been clever enough to forbid me to talk to anyone about it. Of course, I could have written it down and left it as a note on the kitchen table, but then I would have been facing my mistress's ire and possibly an Essence Rack, a Systematic Vice, or eternal servitude to this infernal woman. (Eternal in this context means: as long as she lives. Thankfully humans usually don't last longer than 80 years. Some die much earlier. I was hoping for Jane Farrar's early death).

All in all, things were going well for Nat in his career, but badly in his love life. I could tell he still loved Kitty, and I knew Kitty too was hopelessly in love with him (okay, I know it wasn't nice to read into her diary, but I couldn't help it – when I flew over her head as a fly, I happened to see her writing something in poetry format and just had to peek into it. Tell you what, Kitty could have become a real poet if she wanted to. She was writing a beautiful poem about the chaos in her soul and the longing she felt for her husband who, stupidly, was distancing himself from her. The poem itself was titled 'Chaos'. Very surrealistic piece, just to my taste). So, they still loved each other, but Nat held back from showing it while Kitty fled into the world of poetry instead of his arms.

Kitty's parents visited them once again in early September, and I saw the sadness in Kitty's eyes when she lied them in the face about having problems with her lungs and needing fresh air in the countryside. She even produced a few fake coughs (as Nathaniel had advised her beforehand) and looked rather guilty about it.

Finally, when Kitty was in her third month, they packed to take her to her temporary home in the countryside. I turned into an ant and took a more or less comfortable place in the glove compartment of Nat's Ford Fiesta.

"You still haven't told me why you chose Fenny Bridges of all villages," I heard Kitty's voice coming from the passenger seat. The back seat was packed with bags that I expected to be full of maternity dresses and various household items. On top of the luggage sat Enid in the form of a parrot. I suspected that she would be serving Kitty in human form, but there were too many bags to squeeze into the tiny car to make space for another human as well, so she had to choose a smaller creature to appear as. It had been years since I was so close to another demon, so I had to cut back on all magical activities to make sure she wouldn't notice my presence.

"In all honesty, I don't know," Nathaniel replied. "The name of the village sounded familiar somehow. I've never been there before, but still… it was familiar. Can't explain why. It just felt the right option to choose Fenny Bridges. Why, would you have chosen another one instead?"

"No," Kitty said with a sigh, "but it would have felt nice if you had asked for my opinion."

"Don't start this again, please," the kid whined. "I asked for your opinion on the hair dye."

"No, you didn't. You thought it was natural that I would comply without a word of objection, so I had to make it clear for you that it wasn't. I don't mind Fenny Bridges, but I do mind that you've been ignoring my opinion for months!"

Don't stop, Kitty, don't stop! – I thought cheerfully. Tell him what you think of him! Tell him what an unbearable git he is! It never hurts if he hears it over and over again!

"I've only wanted everything to be perfect!" the kid snapped. "I was doing it all for you and the baby!"

"Your nose is rapidly growing, Pinocchio," Kitty said sarcastically. Hah, I loved her style. A woman with an attitude – just the perfect match for a man with a serious case of megalomania.

For a few seconds Nat didn't reply and I couldn't see his face from the glove compartment, but I could almost hear him rolling his eyes. "We've talked this over already, Kitty," he said finally, his voice sounding tired. "And I've admitted that I've been doing certain things in my own interest, but… not everything."

"Just this," Kitty whispered, and judging by the creaking of the springs in her seat, I thought she must have turned away from him to look out the window.

o o o O O O o o o

As Kitty opened the car door, I turned into a spider and scurried out of the glove compartment and through the door into the garden. Well, as much as it could be called a garden, as its fence was missing at certain places. The house itself was tiny, but looked clean and nice. There weren't any houses in the vicinity – the next one seemed to be half a kilometre away. Nat couldn't have picked a house more isolated from the rest of the village.

Well, I liked the surroundings at least. There were apple trees growing around, all of them packed with ripe, red apples. It was October, just the right season for picking them.

Bushes with orange-yellow leaves were scattered around the house, and beyond them, only plains could be seen as long as the eye could reach. It was a peaceful and silent place. Too silent for a girl like Kitty who'd spent all her life in London.

Enid the parrot flew out of the car and turned into a maid in her forties, wearing a nice little frilly apron. As for Nat… I was sorry that in my spider form I couldn't laugh. Because he was a laugh. I hadn't seen him in the morning because I had taken my place in the glove compartment before he and Kitty got into the car, so I was surprised (rather shocked) by the kid's attire. He wore a striped flannel shirt that wasn't tucked into his jeans and he had bound his ridiculously long hair into a ponytail. At that moment I could easily have imagined him milking a cow. He looked rather uneasy about his clothes, but I thought he still looked much better than in those boring designer suits.

We entered the house (I slipped under the door after Nat had slammed it in my 'face'). On the inside it looked just as small and just as tidy as on the outside. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a small pantry. Just how a peasant's house was supposed to look. Thankfully it had electricity and hot water and even a tiny television. There was no telephone, though, so the kid had got Kitty a mobile phone to call him if she needed something or if something was wrong. I was wondering whether I had been imagining things when he'd said 'call me if something's wrong', because I thought I had seen a hopeful glint in his eyes.

What kind of a hopeful glint, you may ask? Well, a hopeful glint that proved what an insensitive, evil git he was. I was pretty much sure he was hoping for Kitty's miscarriage. Which, at this point, when she was already three months along, would have been more dangerous than it had been weeks and weeks earlier.

It even came to my mind that he could have taken his wife abroad, to a country with no magicians, where no one knew them, and placed her into a well equipped maternity home where she would be cared for. But no, the kid took her to the back of beyond where it would be a miracle if she managed to carry the baby to term without complications. I had the impression that Kitty too was thinking along these lines (okay, it wasn't just a guess, I again looked into her diary, bad, bad Bartimaeus), but she hadn't mentioned it to her husband.

Why? - you must be wondering… Well, her diary gave me answers for this as well. She wrote that she knew that her John (she kept referring to him as John in case the diary got into wrong hands) didn't want the baby. She wrote that sometimes she had thought he didn't mind them having a child, but again and again her hopes had got deflated like a punctured balloon (yeah, she used this metaphor, I'm not making it up). Kitty's latest diary entries had been full of pain and hopelessness.

At the beginning, she had written, I was full of hope that he would eventually soften at the prospect of having a child, and at first he indeed looked as if he had, but as the weeks passed, he distanced himself more and more from me, and not only from me, but from our baby as well. He's organising everything to be 'perfect', or at least he pretends to, but I fear he'd be happy if I miscarried. He wants this burden off his shoulders. I wanted to go for a pregnancy check-up, to find out if everything was all right with the baby, but he forbade me to, saying that people would recognise me if I went for the check-up with the papers of 'Kathleen Mandrake', and he was too busy to get forged papers for me at the moment. He said I could get a check-up in the village, the local doctor surely wouldn't insist on papers for an examination. I'm losing hope. If John's aim is that I lose the baby, well, then let him have it, I won't do anything against it. It would still be better than giving birth to a child whom he'd never love.

So there, that's John Mandrake for you. No, not Nathaniel. John. Because, after the short period of 'living happily with Kitty as Nathaniel', John Mandrake was again taking over in him. He was turning back into the cruel git he must have been before Kitty's love had temporarily melted the ice around his heart (wow, aren't I a great poet myself?). Nat's life seemed to have seasons, just like the year – in summer he had been happy with Kitty, but in autumn he started to turn cold. I didn't want to imagine what he'd be like in winter.

"Well, nice place," Kitty said, looking around. I saw that she wasn't very enthusiastic about the house, but she didn't detest it either. It was really cosy, after all.

"Yes, isn't it?" the kid replied casually. "I just hope your parents don't get the idea of visiting you here…"

Kitty gave him a dark glance. "They won't. I told them the doctor advised me not to have any visitors over the months of my… recuperation."

"Good." Nathaniel nodded. "You're getting good at this."

"Lying, you mean?" she said with an accusatory edge. "You have no idea how much I hate doing it."

"You know it's necessary. Your parents might let it slip to someone, and then… my career would be over."

This made something snap in Kitty. "To hell with your career, and to hell with you too, John! I'm fed up with lying to the whole world, and keeping their grandchild a secret from my parents just because of your fucking magician pride!"

Way to go, Kitty.

"You don't care for anything and anyone, just yourself, and you want to have anything that could hinder your damn career out of the way! The baby, me, my pare…" She suddenly stopped and grabbed her midsection, all the blood draining from her face. In the next instant she slumped into Nat's arms, unconscious.

I don't remember ever seeing the kid this frightened before. Yeah, I had seen him scared a couple of times, like when we were fleeing from the Underwoods' house or from our pursuers in Prague, but none of those came close to the expression he was wearing at the moment.

"E… Enid!" he called, his voice wavering. "Go, get a doctor! No, you'd better stay with her, I will go for the doctor!"

He laid Kitty on the sofa and ran out of the house. As my orders had been to follow him wherever he went, I turned into a fly and flew after him.

o o o O O O o o o

Nathaniel jumped into the Ford Fiesta and drove into the village. On foot it might have taken him at least six-seven minutes to get into the centre of the village, even if he had run flat out. This way he was in the centre in about a minute, looking desperately around for help. The streets were deserted except for a middle-aged woman leading half a dozen children.

His heart beating against his ribcage, Nathaniel drove the car next to the little group and rolled down the window. "Excuse me, where can I find the local doctor?" he asked the middle-aged woman.

The woman just stared at him, her eyes wide.

"The local doctor, madam," Nathaniel repeated, his voice wavering with nervousness. If Kitty miscarried, it would be his fault. Why, wouldn't you be happy if she lost the baby? One problem less, a nasty little voice in his mind kept asking him, but he decided to ignore it. There had been times when he found the idea of a miscarriage 'the best and less painful' solution, but now that there was a chance it could really happen, despair tore at his heart with a hundred icy fingers. He still didn't want the child, but Kitty did, and she'd be broken if she lost it… He had to save the baby, for Kitty's sake. And this stupid woman was just staring at him, unblinkingly, as though she were seeing a ghost… "Where – can – I – find – him?"

The woman seemed to have been shaken back to reality. "Drive down this street… there, where you see that house with the green fence, turn left… and drive till you reach a house painted yellow. That's where the doctor lives."

"Thanks." Nathaniel didn't even give the woman a second glance and pushed the accelerator to the floor.

o o o O O O o o o

Kitty opened her eyes, blinking tiredly. The first thing she spotted was Nathaniel's worried face looming over her. She looked around, establishing that she was lying in a bed in some bedroom – presumably in the house they were renting. The room was completely unfamiliar, because she hadn't had a chance to look at the two bedrooms before she fainted.

Fainted? – She frowned, trying to remember. Suddenly everything came rushing back to her: their arrival at Fenny Bridges, the row, the pain… then blackness.

"Have I… lost the baby?" she croaked.

Holding her hand in his, he shook his head, smiling and… crying? Kitty had never seen him cry.

"Bet you're sorry about that…" she whispered, her eyes radiating sadness.

"No, don't say things like that." He held her hand even more firmly, as if never wanting to let go of it. "Everything's fine, my love. You got a shock, nothing more serious. The baby's healthy, the doctor has examined you. But you scared me, silly… don't ever do that again."

"Don't ever make me do it again," she replied with a small smile. "Go, wash your face, you look a fright."

Nathaniel let out a chuckle of relief. "Will do." He leaned closer. "Just don't ever tell anyone in Parliament you saw me crying… I'd never live it down." He gently kissed her on the lips and walked out of the room.

The doctor, a friendly, white-bearded man in his sixties, was packing his things in the living room. Seeing Nathaniel enter, he gave him a smile. "I'm leaving this vial here, it's a small but effective vitamin concentrate. Three drops a day will make your wife healthy and strong in no time, Mr… Er, I think you forgot to tell me your name in the rush."

"Jones," Nathaniel replied. "Arthur Jones."

"Well, then, Mr Jones, take care of your wife. And if you intend to stay here for a longer time, then make sure she visits me at least once in every two weeks. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Doctor. And thank you."

o o o O O O o o o

In all honesty, the kid's latest 'performance' surprised me. Just half an hour earlier I was firm in the belief that he was evil and wouldn't have minded being the cause of his own child's death, but now… I no longer knew what to think. I didn't remember ever having seen him cry. When Mrs Underwood died, he'd been on the verge of tears, but he couldn't – or didn't want to – cry. And now? He was weeping like a little girl.

The more time I spent spying on him, the less I understood him. I had never met a more contradictory figure. As if there had been two different personalities living and fighting inside him: Nathaniel and John. They were winning over each other in a rather random pattern. The kid could change from Nathaniel to John and back to Nathaniel within a few minutes. It was astounding, really.

I watched from the window (in the form of a moth) as the doc walked down the garden path, onto the road that led back into the village. And then, I noticed something else as well. Behind an apple tree, stood a lithe figure. It also seemed to be watching the doctor walk down the road, as if it had been waiting for him to leave. When the doc was out of sight, the figure moved. It was heading for the house. I had half a mind to draw Enid's attention to the source of danger, but later I was happy I hadn't. Well, happy for a few minutes only. Because when I looked back on the events of this day years and years later, I couldn't help thinking that both Nathaniel and Kitty would have been luckier if they had lost their baby today.

The closer the figure came, the more familiar it seemed. No, it wasn't Faquarl, I checked all seven planes. It was a human, and one whom I had seen that day already. The woman from the village. The one who had been walking with all those children. The one who had given Nat such a curious glance. I wondered what she wanted here…

There was a knock on the door. Nathaniel emerged from the bathroom, his face no longer streaked with tears, but his eyes still somewhat bloodshot. He walked deliberately to the door, clearly in the belief that the doctor had left something here by mistake.

"Er… may I help you?" the kid asked, looking rather confused by seeing this woman over again.

She just stared at him, the same way she had in the village. Besides the haunted look in her eyes, she was really sympathetic. She looked around forty, had long, black hair streaked with grey, and there was something familiar about her. And not only because I had already seen her in the village. She resembled someone. But whom? – I asked myself. No matter how much I racked by brains, I couldn't find out. But I didn't even need to, as it turned out a few seconds later.

Her hands nervously wrinkling her shawl, her dark brown eyes never leaving the kid's face, she uttered one single word: "Nathaniel?"

o o o O O O o o o

A/N: since many of the readers of this fic come from the Artemis Fowl fandom, I have a question for you guys. Orion Awards, an AF fansite has asked me to write an article a month for their fan zine. They said the articles could be about Artemis Fowl or just fanfiction in general, whatever I like.
I'm wondering what the average AF fan - or just the average fanfic reader - would be interested in. In my yahoo group people told me that they'd be interested in reading articles about tricks in writing exciting/interesting fics and tips in how to become famous in a fandom, but I don't know the opinion of the AF fans (people in my group are not exactly AF fans). So AF people, please help me out. In your reviews, besides telling me your opinion on this chapter, you could give me ideas for the articles. I'd be really grateful if you did :)